(elegy)

Prologue
In a small New England town, in a Church cemetery
at edge of a family plot with room scarce to bury,
stand twin stones to Agnes M. 1887 – 1897,
and to May, who in chiseled 1901 birth year also entered Heaven.
Missing burial records for these two is a local mystery,
As to why memorials appeared many years later, we are not yet privy.

Stone 1 - Agnes M. 1887 - 1897
Agnes M. - squirming Infancy found you.
You tasted childhood Joys; did you not?
Not for long, alas, youthful Delights enjoyed.
Enjoyed too, perhaps, were Dreams, ’though unfulfilled.
Unfulfilled in father’s love,
but by a Mother’s love embraced.
Embraced never in passion,
for such love was by Fate denied
Denied youth, Life sustained you only briefly.
Briefly, too, Pain found you prior to death;
Death, however, discovered you soon enough.

Stone 2 - May 1901 - 1901
May – Infancy more briefly caressed you.
You momentarily sensed hunger and pain;
Pain and whimpering as if for life forestalled.
Forestalled by Death that so cruelly struck near Birth.

Renewal
May and Agnes M. – in peace now slumber well.
Well beyond early death, shed anonymity.
Anonymity and Mortality have lost you to a poet.

Postscript
Originally interred in a remote section
of the cemetery that later was redesigned:
road upgrade, new lanes, and added plots,
Agnes and May, once in a remote edge of the cemetery, now lie near the busy roundabout
circling a large monument, ironically
adjoining the family plot where, perhaps,
their parents lie, closer in death than in life.

Epilogue
Agnes M. was a child of an unwed 15-year old mother.
May was the daughter of a great grandfather and his second wife.
Incest or adolescent tryst?
Crime and scandal in nineteenth century life.
Agnes died of meningitis in Rhode Island.
Cause of May’s death, source of stones and other details are chronicles yet untold.
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